NDB Securities wins gold at CFA awards

From left: Trainee Research Analyst Lakmi Piyumika, Research Analyst Raguram Raamakrishnan, Head of Research Sidath Kalyanaratne, NDB Securities CEO Prasansani Mendis, NDB Capital Holdings CEO Vajira Kulatilaka, Assistant Manager – Research Dhinali Peiris, Junior Research Analyst Upul Atapattu 

NDB Securities was recognised with top honours at the CFA Sri Lanka Capital Market Awards 2016, taking home the Gold award for Best Stockbroker Research Team. Every year the CFA Awards honour the top capital market professionals in the country, setting the benchmark for those working in the field. 

NDB Securities (NDBS) is one of the largest stock brokerages in Sri Lanka with a reputation for upholding the highest compliance and ethical guidelines. The award was received by the NDBS Research Team headed by Sidath Kalyanaratne. The team comprises of Dhinali Peiris, Raguram Raamakrishnan, Upul Atapattu and Lakmi Piyumika. 

This team offers in-depth research across 10 sectors with a counter coverage of close to 50, servicing over 50,000 local and foreign clients. The team focuses on providing high quality time efficient research with the ultimate objective of reaching a wider audience of investors both local and foreign. NDB has consistently beaten the average return of all analysts covering the counters within their core coverage as per Bloomberg.

NDBS Chief Executive Officer Prasansani Mendis congratulated the research team for their work over the past year. “As a pioneer in the stockbroking industry in Sri Lanka, we have made it a target to outperform our own standards to become pacesetters in the industry. In our pursuit to create value to our clientele, our research will continue to play a pivotal role through wider coverage and in depth analysis. I’m very pleased to have our research team be recognised for their diligent and comprehensive work over the last few years-no doubt this will be the first of many such accolades.”

Commenting on the award and his team’s outstanding work over the past year, Kalyanaratne noted that the NDBS research unit’s multi-disciplinary capacity and a predilection for setting several industry firsts has proved to be the team’s strength. “This team is constantly setting and raising the benchmark for equity research. Our stock recommendations have an arsenal of thorough, comprehensive research behind them, and we have aimed to diversify the work that we do to encompass a larger range of client needs.”

In the first two quarters of 2016, NDBS released research covering the telecommunication sector, FMCG sector, Apparel sector focused on GSP+ and BREXIT developments in addition to the quarterly earning updates and counter initiations. These reports were very well received beyond the immediate audience of fund managers, retailers and the rest of the investment community, reaching out to strategic units of the companies covered. Further, the research team also compiles a daily local market update reviewing the day’s market movements, alongside a global and local weekly review. 

NDB Securities is a fully owned subsidiary of NDB Capital Holdings, the capital market arm of the NDB group. NDBS provides a platform to its institutional and retail clients to access the capital market in Sri Lanka through its equity and debt trading platform. This is supported by a number of value added services such as state of the art online trading facilities for speedy trade execution, margin trading and other credit facilities through its parent NDB Bank and comprehensive coverage of research to add value to support trading activities.